The Last 300 Miles

Ted Thring is a book reviewer for the Queen’s University radio
station.

The setting for this historical novel is the British Columbia interior
in the latter half of the 19th century. An American telegraph company is
building a line from New Westminster northward with the intention of
crossing the Bering Strait and linking up with a line on the Russian
mainland. Three hundred miles of the route remain unsurveyed and a young
surveyor named Stephen Doyle is dispatched from San Francisco to do so.

With a companion guide, Stephen sets out from the headwaters of the
Skeena River en route to Buck’s Bar on the Stikine River. Within a few
days, his guide is killed by a thug hired by a rival telegraph company.
Stephen wounds the thug and drives him off. Undeterred, he determines to
press on alone with only a roughly drawn map of the countryside. So
begins a perilous journey during which he encounters black flies,
mosquitos, grizzly bears, wolves, and the fabulous Bukwas—an apelike
creature said to inhabit the land. He makes his way from one Indian
settlement to another, obtaining supplies and directions from the
Natives. After many misadventures, he reaches Buck’s Bar. Next his
must retrace his route to file his survey report. It is October and the
winter snows have begun, so Stephen improvises a pair of snowshoes. More
adventures and encounters follow.

This fantastic adventure tale is based on actual history but reads like
a story that would be recited around a bonfire at a boys’ summer camp;
in fact, that might be the appropriate place for it.